Boy Shopping (2 page)

“The closest thing we've got to the mob in Nashville is the MuzikMafia, and I don't think Sasha would sleep with anyone who wore a cowboy hat,” Kiki said, kicking off her heels, preparing for the long hike across the lawn.

“What about you? Cowboy Troy is pretty hot.”

Kiki almost threw a shoe at her. “I don't date anybody who sings country music, black or not.”

“He doesn't sing, he raps country,” Jasmine explained as they got out of the car. “They call it hick-hop.”

“Are you kidding? No, don't answer that.” They set out, watching their steps carefully by moonlight. The Silvermans didn't keep horses, but they did have dogs. Big dogs. Despite the danger of stepping in something gross, it was a perfect night for a long walk, barefoot in wet grass. October is still warm in Nashville most years, and this was no exception. Kiki was daydreaming about her Halloween costume while Jasmine went on and on about the night she and Camille met Cowboy Troy at a party Laura Keller's parents threw.

“You could do a lot worse than him,” Jasmine decided. “And it's not like you're otherwise involved.”

“I'm always ‘otherwise involved,'” Kiki pointed out, plucking a late-season daisy to wear over her ear. “Where do you think I was when you were partying with Cowboy Troy?”

“You were working!”

“Playing a show isn't really work.” The photo shoots, interviews, rehearsals, meeting with reps, lawyers, and managers—that was work. But actually being onstage making music was different for Kiki. Playing music really was play.

Jasmine rolled her eyes. Her parents were entertainment lawyers, and she shared their belief that music was just something to buy and sell, like soap or legal services. They might like being lawyers, but they wouldn't do it for free. The fact that Kiki would play music for free—would, in fact, pay for the right to play—just seemed crazy to Jasmine's whole family.

“That wasn't my point anyway,” Jasmine said.

“You had a point?”

Jasmine snapped the bloom off another daisy and threw it at Kiki. “My point is, when was the last time you went out on a date?”

“Mark and I rented a movie to watch while we did a physics problem set Thursday night.”

“If you think that's a date, then it's been too long.”

“It felt like a date. Sort of. I mean, we were in his bed.” Sprawling across Mark's battered old quilt, so faded it was almost white, doodling on his ankle with a Sharpie while he figured out when two trains, hurtling at each other along the same track, would crash—it felt so
right
. Just thinking about it made Kiki's chest hurt. How could he not feel it?

“
On
his bed. With physics books and graphing calculators. Come on, Kiki—when was the last time a guy took you to dinner, then to a party?”

“Last Saturday.”

Jasmine groaned dramatically, like a sick cow. Still, Kiki could barely hear her over the pounding bass of “Gold Digger” thudding from Sasha's house. They were close enough now to see dancing shadows inside one of the second-floor rooms.

“Kiki, when your managers take you to dinner to go over contracts, then drag you to a label meet-and-greet, that is not a date! When was the last time a guy—not a manager, not a reporter, not Mark or Franklin—a
real
guy asked you out?”

“Guys ask me out every day.” Usually the same guys, every day. The ones who had Temporary Insanity bumper stickers all over their lockers, even though Wentworth fined $100 per sticker at the end of the year because it was so hard to remove them.

“I said real guys! Stupid loser stalker types who are just into you because of the band don't count!”

“This conversation is over,” Kiki said, stepping from the wild lawn to the concrete porch.

“Kiki, you need to get over it. Mark isn't the only guy in the world, and if he doesn't want you like you want him, then—”

“Hey!” Sasha yelled, kicking open the front door. She had a bottle of Southern Comfort in her left hand and an antique telescope in her right. Her tiny dress was made of black patent leather and her toenails were painted to match, which made her skin look even paler than it was. But her cheeks were flushed from dancing and dimpled by her huge smile.

“You've got great timing,” Kiki said, giving her a hug.

As always, Sasha's violet curls smelled like Christmas, a mixture of clove cigarettes and vanilla shampoo. Sasha was the sweetest person Kiki knew, much nicer than Kiki was herself, and gorgeous, too—she was the only goth Kiki had ever met who didn't need makeup to create flawless skin and blood-red lips. But Sasha had as much trouble with Wentworth boys as Kiki did, and for the same reason: they found her intimidating.

Boys saw the black clothes, angel face, and purple hair and assumed that Sasha Silverman was wild and dangerous. They all seemed to think that Sasha would only date equally dark, poetic boys in long black trench coats, though Sasha would have been happy to date any of the geeky, quiet boys who were too afraid to talk to her. Instead, her freshman year she went out with a junior named Jake, who was too dumb to be intimidated by her, and a senior named Ben the next, who wasn't stupid, but wasn't half as smart as he thought he was. Sasha had put up with each of them for six months, then dumped them when she decided it was better to be single and lonely than lonely in a relationship.

“Darling, I've got great
everything
,” she said in her mother's fake old-Hollywood accent, then she cracked up. Her giggles rose above the thudding bass coming from—well, Kiki wasn't sure where it was coming from. Every room was wired for sound, but she guessed that most people were dancing in the living room, off to the left. Her guess was confirmed when a tall, thin stranger came staggering from that direction with a recycling bin full of empty bottles.

“Thomas, you don't have to do that!” Sasha said, whirling around. Jasmine's jaw dropped, but Kiki had to laugh, and kick herself for not taking Jasmine's bet. Thomas was gorgeous—gorgeous!—but not at all what Kiki expected. He was black, for one thing, with skin the color of wildflower honey, and dark gold eyes like the harvest moon. And instead of gothic black, he was wearing a rose-red shirt and dark jeans, an outfit that Kiki knew hadn't come from any mall in Nashville.

“I don't mind at all. But where shall I empty it?” This time, Kiki's mouth fell open. Thomas's low, velvety voice, which could put Franklin's to shame, was made even more irresistible by a crisp British accent.

“I'll take it,” Sasha said, trying to pull the heavy bin from his grasp without setting down her drink or her telescope. “You're not supposed to lift a finger. You're my guest. I order you to go have fun!”

“The kitchen's that way,” Kiki told Thomas, waving him toward the back of the house. She and Jasmine each grabbed one of Sasha's elbows and dragged her to the nearest bathroom for interrogation.

“So what do you think?” Sasha asked, perched on the sink. She was giggling because she knew exactly what Kiki and Jasmine thought.

“I think he has a twin brother,” Jasmine said as she checked to make sure the door was locked. “At least, he'd better.”

“Set of triplets?” Kiki asked hopefully.

“'Fraid not. One and only. Rarer than a black rose is beauty such as his. A blossom among the thorns—” She suddenly hiccupped, which was a good thing, because Kiki could see that Sasha could probably spout gothic love poetry all night about Thomas.

“Did you meet him during the summer?” Jasmine's voice had gone squeaky with amazement.

“I
wish
. Touring churches with Grandma would have been a lot more fun if I had known he was waiting for me back at the hotel.”

“So where did he come from?”

“London.”

“You know that's not what I mean!”

“Oh, right. He's an exchange student, over at Carroll Academy.”

“What were you doing at Carroll?” It was an all-boys prep school that beat Wentworth year after year in football. That annual game was the only time Wentworth students saw the Carroll boys. Carroll had a sister school, called Quincy Hall, that shared Carroll's dances and drama department.

“I didn't meet him at Carroll. What difference does it make how we met?” Sasha was blushing again, and not from happiness. Kiki wondered what the big secret could possibly be, since Thomas was not a member of the mafia or the MuzikMafia, and definitely was not a troll.

“Um, hello—who is single here? Is it everyone? We need information!” Jasmine pointed out.

“Oh, I don't think you'd really be interested in how I met Thomas.”

“Are you kidding?” Jasmine squealed. “Sasha—”

All three of their cell phones suddenly beeped.

“Camille,” they all said, before they even checked to see the text message. Of course it was Camille, asking them,
Where y'at?

While Jasmine tried to explain which of Sasha's seven bathrooms they were in (in fewer than one hundred and twenty-five letters), Kiki watched Sasha stare at the door. She had never seen Sasha so happy about a guy. Yes, she was drunk, but Kiki had seen Sasha drunk around Jake and Ben, the two guys she had gone out with before, and it wasn't the same. Sasha was always slightly different around Ben and Jake, a little too quiet, not as giggly, not as confident. Sasha would never have ordered them to go have fun, even in jest.

“So what's up with you and Thomas?” Kiki finally asked.

Sasha gazed down at her, with nothing but happiness in her gray eyes.

“I am in love. At long last. Sasha, Queen of Loneliness, has found the one.”

“How do you know he's the one?” asked Jasmine.

A loud banging on the door kept Sasha from answering. Jasmine unlocked the door and let in Camille.

“Thought you could use these,” Camille said, handing around icy cans of Diet Coke. They each poured an inch or two into the sink, then made up the difference with Southern Comfort.

Anyone at Wentworth would say that Kiki, Jasmine, Sasha, and Camille were the hottest girls in the junior class. People called them the Pussycat Posse, even though that annoyed all four of them, especially Kiki—she'd rather be compared to a band with some musical talent than to the Pussycat Dolls. Still, whether they liked it or not, the name stuck and the girls managed to make it their own. Sometimes, though, Kiki was curious how Camille got lumped in with them. She was the only one who was pretty in an ordinary, everyday sort of way, so she was the only one the boys felt comfortable with. They might want to sleep with all four of them, but they only wanted to date Camille.

“So . . . how do you know he's the one?” Jasmine repeated after taking a swig of her drink.

“You know the perfect fit when you feel it,” Camille answered for Sasha. “Same with jeans as it is with boys.”

“
You
know how they got together,” Jasmine said accusingly.

Kiki knew Jasmine was right: Sasha must have told Camille the truth about Thomas. Camille was more likely to compare boys to video games (fun when they're new, uninteresting once you win them) or cake (tasty, but bad for you) than to clothes. Kiki, Jasmine, and Sasha would use the clothes comparison, but not Camille. That
had
to be a comparison Camille picked up from Sasha.

Sasha gave Camille a piercing glare.

“I didn't say anything!” Camille squealed in self-defense.

“You know you're going to tell us sooner or later, so spill it,” Jasmine said.

Sasha pursed her lips, but Jasmine's icy glare finally got to her.

She threw her head back, took a sip from her spiked soda, then exploded. “All right! I met him online!” She finished off her drink, then glared at Kiki and Jasmine. “Go ahead! Laugh!”

Kiki met Jasmine's eyes in the mirror and raised her eyebrows. Jasmine's jaw had dropped. Kiki knew just how she felt. She had always thought that online dating was for old maids desperately searching for someone to marry, not gorgeous teenagers like Sasha and Thomas.

“We're not laughing, Sash,” Kiki said thoughtfully. “I mean, yeah, we wouldn't want you going out with some old perv you met on MySpace, but Thomas . . . Thomas . . .”

“Thomas is hotter than a biscuit! You met him online?” Jasmine squealed in amazement. “Where?”

“There's this site, called HelloHello. These girls I know from the gym told me about it. It's not like MySpace. You have to be invited to get on by two people who're already members . . . that keeps the pervs off. Most people on the Nashville site are in private schools, which makes sense—most of us have been going to school with the same seventy-five people since kindergarten, and it's hard to meet people outside of school. But it's not just a dating site. You can post what you want—pictures, profile, whether you're just there to connect with people in your area, or if you're looking for love or whatever. And you just shop, sort of, for what you're looking for. It's fun.”

“I think it's awesome,” Camille said, sliding her arm around Sasha's waist. “Can you and Thomas invite me?”

“Of course!” Sasha said.

Jasmine gaped at Camille. “Why would you need to look online for a guy? Everybody wants to go out with you!”

Camille shrugged. “I've already gone out with everyone datable at Wentworth.”

They all laughed, though it wasn't strictly true.

“What about Franklin?” Kiki asked. “He's hot.” Kiki knew that Franklin would go out with Camille in a heartbeat.